Figure 5.49

4. Play around with effects until you are satisfied with the layer's appearance. Use the following effects as guidelines for the Hollyhock-Property layer:

Pattern Overlay Use the Stucco 2 pattern from the Texture Fill 2 library with a scale of 99%.

Color Overlay Select a forest green with HSB values of 100,50,50. Set the Blend mode to Overlay.

Bevel and Emboss Use a Smooth Inner Bevel directed down with 100% Depth, 3 px Size, and 8 px Soften.

Inner Shadow Set Opacity to 50%, set Distance to 5 px, set Choke to 0%, and set Size to 5 px.

I used a grayscale pattern here and overlaid it with a green hue. A bevel makes the edges of the fill more distinct, and the inner shadow adds depth to the forest.

TIP Setting a scale of 99% in the Pattern Picker is qualitatively different from a setting of 100%. Photoshop blurs patterns at all scales other than 50%, 100%, and 200%. Therefore, setting a scale of 99% looks blurrier than a setting of 100% even though the pattern appears almost the same size.

5. Work on each of the four road layers in turn, starting with Hollyhock-RoadA. Fill the layer and then creatively apply Layer Style Effects to enhance each layer's appearance. The road layers are segregated to illustrate their uses. RoadA is a paved road for vehicle traffic. RoadB is a gravel right-of-way. RoadC is a cart path, and RoadD is a foot path. You will have to turn off the Trails layer temporarily because it obscures RoadD.

NOTE If you are not feeling particularly creative, the completed tutorial is provided on the CD for your reference as Ho11yhock2.psd. You can open this file and investigate how effects were applied to the road layers.

6. To draw more attention to the footpaths, accent them using a stroked line. First, work on the dashed line on the Hollyhock-Trails layer: The line going down the center of the already patterned RoadD layer was already given its dashed line type in AutoCAD. All you have to do is stroke the layer to change the color of the line and widen it slightly.

TIP It is best to control line type from AutoCAD; dashed, hidden, center, and phantom lines as seen on architectural plans are examples of line type. Set the line type in your AutoCAD layers (and set the scale with LTSCALE) before bringing image layers into Photoshop.

Stroke the Hollyhock-Trails layer. Choose crimson red for the stroke color. Setting the size to 4 pixels in a centered position will do nicely. Figure 5.50 shows the results from work on the road network.

The buildings on the Hollyhock grounds fall into four categories: accommodations, session houses, major structures, and minor structures. Let's color code each type of building and use effects to make them appear almost three-dimensional. Once you develop a layer style, some structures can use the same style with just a change to their color coding.

7. Select the Hollyhock-Session Houses layer. Temporarily add a single pixel inside stroke effect like you did in step 3 to help you identify which structures are session houses. Fill the session houses with black. Then apply the following Layer Style Effects:

Drop Shadow Set the angle to -125°, set Distance to 11px, and set Size to 6 px.

This process gives the session houses orange color coding with color overlay, making them look as if they have sloped roof surfaces with bevel and emboss and giving the structures depth with the Drop Shadow effect. Notice that we changed the global sun angle in this step, which affects all the shadows in the document. An angle of -125° indicates that the sun will come from the lower-left portion of the image. Turn off the Stroke effect.

8. Select the Hollyhock-Accommodations layer. Apply an inside red stroke as usual to reveal the locations of these structures on screen. Using the Paint Bucket, fill the selected structures, as shown in Figure 5.51.

Adobe Photoshop can be a complex tool only because you can do so much with it, however for in this video series, we're going to keep it as simple as possible. In fact, in this video you'll see an overview of the few tools and Adobe Photoshop features we will use. When you see this video, you'll see how you can do so much with so few features, but you'll learn how to use them in depth in the future videos.